Adjustments

Abigail is adjusting well. Her English vocabulary is expanding every day and probably is up to a couple dozen words. She understands a lot more than that, though. We can tell her to go make her bed or put something in her bedroom and she will do it, although she would not be able to describe what she just did back to us. I'm sure the pantomimes that accompany nearly all communications help in this.

She is becoming very American in her eating as well. While she initially did not really like the breads that we eat a lot of (the Chinese typically do not eat baked bread; any bread or buns tend to be steamed rather than baked), she now eats just as much of it as we do. She loves meat and vegetables and nearly anything that gets put on her plate, except peas and perhaps broccoli. We're working on the broccoli. We understand the peas; none of us eat peas either. This is one battle we don't fight, and she's quite adept at moving the peas to one side with her chopsticks.

She rejected the use of chopsticks while in China, but has now picked them back up. I think she was trying to be American for a while and then figured out that it was much easier for her to use what she was accustomed to.

She also sleeps well. We will put her to bed at 8:00 and won't hear a peep out of her until 7 or 8 the next morning. She is not a morning person, and would rather laze around in bed for as long as possible. On Sunday, I got her up after some cajoling and then told her to make her bed. Deb found her several minutes later, sound asleep, back in bed. The way she stumbles around after just getting up is almost comical. Each step is laboriously taken with a shuffling thump that makes her tousled hair swing from side to side, and her dour expression warns us all to leave her alone in her sleepiness.

She has a delightful personality and loves to have fun. She's always laughing about something, and will laugh when others laugh, even though she has no idea what they are laughing about. She is mischievous and loves to tease, much to the chagrin of her brothers, who aren't used to this at all. She is also noisy. It's hard to communicate to her what an "indoor voice" is like, and she will announce her presence loudly, at any time, interrupting whatever is currently in progress.

She has a pair of dress shoes that she wore to church. She liked the clacking noises they made on the hard floors. She insisted on wearing those shoes on Monday and drove everyone nuts with the constant clacking and clumping as she stomped around the house. We have very little carpet in our house, so there was a lot of clacking.

We are having a harder time adjusting. The kids have recovered from jet lag just fine, we are still working on it. The tiredness at the end of the day is accentuated by the constant attention that Abigail demands. She does not play or work independently and demands constant attention. Yesterday was my first full day back at work, so Deb had Abigail for the full day. When I got home, Deb was visibly worn out, the boys were nowhere to be found, and Abigail was bouncing off the walls.

We were blessed with a dinner brought in by another church family, so it was nice to just sit down and eat. After dinner, Deb kept Abigail occupied decorating the Christmas tree while I finished up math and physics with the boys. When we got her to bed at 8:00, the silence was palpable. Deb and I fell into bed, quite exhausted, before 10:00, and both of us were awake at 2:30am.

During our family devotions, I am trying to emphasize a few of the fruits of the Spirit, especially patience, gentleness, and self-control. These are what we need a special measure of right now. Perhaps the joy and peace will follow. This is a huge disruption to the family, one that was not entirely unexpected, but difficult to live through nonetheless. It's one of those situations where we are forced to draw daily on God's grace and providence. It makes me think of how the priests carried the Ark into the Jordan River when the Israelites crossed towards Jericho. It wasn't stepping into a small shallow stream, it was a large river at flood stage. One step and they are over their heads. They took the first step, and THEN God parted the waters.

We are now in this over our heads. We are taking it one day at a time, and eagerly (OK, sometimes wearily) look forward to what God is going to do each day. We know that he will part the waters for us as well.